He's right--so far.
And he said I'd be coming home beaten. There he's wrong. I've
got a hunch that something 'll happen to me in this Greaser town."
He went out into a wide, whitewashed, high-ceiled corridor, and
from that into an immense room which, but for pool tables, bar,
benches, would have been like a courtyard. The floor was
cobblestoned, the walls were of adobe, and the large windows
opened like doors. A blue cloud of smoke filled the place. Gale
heard the click of pool balls and the clink of glasses along the
crowded bar. Bare-legged, sandal-footed Mexicans in white rubbed
shoulders with Mexicans mantled in black and red. There were
others in tight-fitting blue uniforms with gold fringe or tassels
at the shoulders. These men wore belts with heavy, bone-handled
guns, and evidently were the rurales, or native policemen. There
were black-bearded, coarse-visaged Americans, some gambling round
the little tables, others drinking. The pool tables were the center
of a noisy crowd of younger men, several of whom were unsteady on
their feet. There were khaki-clad cavalrymen strutting in and out.
At one end of the room, somewhat apart from the general meelee,
was a group of six men round a little table, four of whom were
seated, the other two standing. These last two drew a second
glance from Gale. The sharp-featured, bronzed faces and piercing
eyes, the tall, slender, loosely jointed bodies, the quiet, easy,
reckless air that seemed to be a part of the men--these things
would plainly have stamped them as cowboys without the buckled
sombreros, the colored scarfs, the high-topped, high-heeled boots
with great silver-roweled spurs.
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